“Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
I don’t think that programme is a bag of tricks to secretly get sex, money, power, prestige, etc. but by spiritual or pseudospiritual means.
It’s not a device in a cosmic hustle to get my own way but dress it up as God’s will.
And I’ve certainly been guilty of humblebragging: listing material achievements as examples of 'the programme working' whilst secretly wanting people to think highly of me on that account.
The Twelve and Twelve recasts such dubious achievements:
“For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel elated. When temporary good fortune came our way, we indulged ourselves in fantasies of still greater victories over people and circumstances. Thus blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to play the big shot. Of course, people turned away from us, bored or hurt.”
... temporary good fortune.
It has been noted by many spiritual writers and commentators that worldly success, recognition, approval, etc., by no means correlate in God’s eye’s with doing God’s will.
In fact, the two will often be mutually exclusive: the sacrifices required for worldly success, recognition, approval, etc., are often sacrifices precisely of the apparently small things (big in God’s eyes).
What matters to me now is the performance of the work in front of me.